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Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life

by Delia Ephron

Little, Brown and Company ·2022 ·304 pages ·Memoir
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82/99
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88/99

Critics

Top of the Pile

76/99

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Scholars

93/99

Rating

84/99

Volume

61/99

Rating

90/99

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About This Book

The bestselling, beloved writer of romantic comedies like You've Got Mail tells her own late-in-life love story, complete with a tragic second act and joyous resolution. Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She'd lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry's death, she decided to make one small change in her life—she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell. She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora. Delia did not remember him, but after several weeks of exchanging emails and sixties folk songs, he flew east to see her. They were crazy, utterly, in love. But this was not a rom-com: four months later she was diagnosed with AML, a fierce leukemia. In Left on Tenth, Delia Ephron enchants as she seesaws us between tears and laughter, navigating the suicidal lows of enduring cutting-edge treatment and the giddy highs of a second chance at love. With Peter and her close girlfriends by her side, with startling clarity, warmth, and honesty about facing death, Ephron invites us to join her team of warriors and become believers ourselves.


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Reviews

"Even more endearing than you'd think."

Kirkus Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Breaking sentences and phrases into speaking rhythms, Ephron encourages us not to see her prose on the page so much as to hear a story told in her voice ..."

Mary Laura Philpott· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Delia Ephron is also a chronicler of her life, but one less inclined to focus on the dark side — even when the story is a tough one, as hers initially appears."

Joyce Maynard· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Ephron's reluctance to portray herself as an ideal patient taps into readers' empathy and adds tremendous power to her brutally candid and moving memoir of her long battle with a very aggressive cancer."

Kevin Howell· Shelf Awareness Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Her endurance is nothing short of mind boggling, her survival to tell the tale even more miraculous."

Carol Haggas· Booklist Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"With poetic writing, strong characterization, and a powerful love story, Ephron's memoir takes readers on a journey of loss, pain, hope, and perseverance."

Natalie Browning· Library Journal Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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